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Jennifer Quinn

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Jennifer Quinn is a professor of mathematics in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma and interim director for the campus's Teaching & Learning Center. She earned her BA, MS, and PhD from Williams College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin, respectively. After twelve years teaching at Occidental College, rising to the rank of full professor and serving as Department Chair, Jenny left her tenured position to follow her husband to the Pacific Northwest. During that uncertain time, she had the privilege to serve as Executive Director for the Association for Women in Mathematics for two years while lecturing part-time at local Tacoma institutions. She was hired by UW Tacoma in 2007 to help create a non-existent mathematics curriculum in the newly expanded four-year institution and has thrived there ever since.

Jenny received one of MAA's 2007 Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching, the MAA's 2006 Beckenbach Book award for Proofs That Really Count: The Art of Combinatorial Proof, co-authored with Arthur Benjamin, and had the honor to co-edit Math Horizons (also with Arthur Benjamin) from 2004-2008. Over the years she has served on the boards or steering committees of the Spectrum Book series, Mathematics Magazine, Math Horizons, Phi Beta Kappa Alpha Alumni Association of California, and Oregon Public Broadcasting's production Mathematics Illuminated.

As a combinatorial scholar, Jenny thinks that beautiful proofs are as much art as science. Simplicity, elegance, and transparency should be the driving principles. She strives to bring this same ethic to her professional service and administrative work.